. . . and down I go, into a deep, dark hole now.
Something pulling me back as I go . . .
A voice.
A woman’s voice.
• • •
I’m back up.
Turbines to speed, one-quarter impulse power.
Batman and Mr. Sulu, fighting for control of my self-destructing brain.
I’m running down a stairwell, following a big meaty guy, and our footfalls bounce off the walls like basketballs, slapping against my eardrums. I’m waking up running. That’s never happened to me before. The euphoria is still hanging on like the clingy remnants of a really amazing dream. And it sleets back in tiny little slushies as I feel another presence in my system, like a cavalry charge delivering a new attack, backing me up somehow. My logical mind is wondering if the drink they gave me back there was some sort of reagent to take the edge off my hallucinatory state, or maybe I was hit with something during my blackout? My senses quickly drown out Mr. Logical as we get to the bottom of the stairwell, and a door opens and I smell the stuffy subterranean concrete. Seems like a parking structure. Something out of an old dream I had years ago. Someone is shoving me from the back. A screech of tires on smooth concrete. The smell of burning rubber and gasoline.
The hands shove me forward again. That woman’s voice again. It’s like Tinkerbell back there, telling me to move my ass or Captain Hook will stab his naughty metal pig sticker right up in my bad place. It’s almost like being a kid again. I wonder why I never tried recreational drugs before tonight.
I’m suddenly in the backseat of a car that smells old and moldy, and there’s a woman on my right side and a very big person on my left. Feels like there’s a lot of room back here. Who’s driving? Does it matter?
“He’s fucked up,” the woman’s voice says. Someone shines a penlight in my eyes. Then she says something else, something about my pupils being dilated.
The big guy next to me smells very familiar. Why does that comfort me? The car accelerates as the next wave tsunamis over my brain. I feel this one like a wall of water, splashing in my face. Wait. It is water.
Someone just threw water on me.
“Stay with us,” the woman’s voice says.
Why can’t I see her?
Why can’t I see anything?
The fast neon and glimmering lights of the city hit my face—we’re racing up into the street. I’m jerked around as the driver makes some fast moves, getting us into the chaos of downtown. Oh great. Downtown Houston in the middle of the night while I’m overdosing on some lab-grade truthtell. I’m about to really lose my mind, I think.
But the fear buries itself fast, smothered in a wave of security, as a voice comes out of the neon in my eyes:
“Hang in there, kid. You have to detox. Just try to stay awake.”
It’s really familiar, the man’s voice.
The cavalry.
I see his face in the streetlights flashing by above me and he smiles, his bleached blond hair sparkling, like maybe the way an archangel is supposed to look after it saves your ass.
“Franklin,” I manage to say. “What the hell took you so long?”
I see him give that old smile of his, and he makes some kind of remark that sounds funny, but I can’t tell. I don’t hear it all the way because by the time he finishes talking I’m under the wave again and the woman is telling the driver to stand on it. I turn in the direction of her voice and I try real hard to see her face. The neon dreamlight sparkles her up as we come out from under an elevated freeway overpass, and she looks really familiar.
Like another angel.
There’s something I have to tell these people, but I can’t remember what the hell it is. Something important. About Bruce Willis, I think.
Something about an action movie.
• • •
I calm myself as we leave downtown behind and plunge into the heart of . . . somewhere. My eyes are fogged, my face and hair soaked with sweat and water. Doesn’t feel like my clothes are wet, which seems odd at first, but I don’t pay attention to that for very long. I’m concentrating on storefronts and clubs racing by on either side. A time-lapse blur. The voice of the woman, telling me to stay with her. It seems like a million years later when we pull into a driveway in some neighborhood that feels like it might be in the center of a whale and everything is slow, slow, slow now. Sheets of molasses coming down hard, trying to pin me to the earth as they hustle me out of the car and walk me to the rear of a house that looks huge and old and wooden, but I can’t be sure. My feet stick to the ground and I have to pull them up with a lot of effort. Finally, I just stand there in place . . . and someone has to grab me and fly me through the air. Wind in my eyes as that happens. Cool breeze and air-conditioning. A soft bed to land in.
Where the hell am I now?
Someone wearing white looms over me, asking a question in some alien language. I think when I try to open my mouth and answer the question, my lips are stapled together. Something cool jets into my heart. Someone moving over me.
Receding back.
Down and down.
Backwards across the universe.
To the end of everything.
So this is what the edge looks like.
I’m looking right at it.
The woman’s voice calls me back. I struggle to find it and I swim like hell. My father is here, too. The Sarge stands right next to him. Tells me not to look.
God is laughing at me.
Don’t look.
• • •
I feel it for the whole five hours it takes for me to detox. I never pass out or go under. They won’t let that happen. Someone is always with me. But none of these people have faces. Sun creeps into the room I’m in, slotted through old-fashioned blinds. I can see trees outside, just a little hint of green, the chirping of birds. Somehow I can feel it when the woman comes in to watch over me. She forces me to drink lots of water. Sometimes she gives me fruit juice. Food is right out of the question. And I can feel Franklin, too. I want to know what’s going on, but I can’t ever make my mouth work. I hear someone say something about it being too late, that I’m a vegetable now. But that’s not true. I made it back from the edge hours ago, days ago, weeks ago. Years ago. I’m smarter than the average bear. I play video games better than anyone else. Really, I do. These people saved me from maniacs. The bad guys are on all sides of us now. They are the enemy of my enemy’s enemy. I want to tell them all these things but I have to undo the staples on my lips first. Have to pry my mouth open. Have to do it soon.
• • •
“Who are you?”
Those are the first words I say to anyone. I say them to the woman sitting next to the bed. She was reading to me from a book about sniper guns just now. She is beautiful in the way that plain women are beautiful, in the way hard women are beautiful. She reminds me of my mother.
She smiles when she hears my voice.
“My name’s Marcie. You’re in our house.”
“You’re very pretty. Are you his wife?”
“Whose wife?”
“Franklin’s.”
She makes a funny thing happen with her face. “I’m Bob’s business associate. We own this house, along with some others.”
“You’re all war veterans. He told me about you.”
“Did he now?”
“Thank you. For saving my life.”
“You don’t have to thank us, friend,” says another voice from across the room. “You have to pay us.”
I almost smile, because this time the joke is funny.
Franklin comes through an open door I never noticed and has a seat on the other side of me. He’s got his cowboy hat on, a white one, and he’s duded-up real fine with a jacket and string tie, silver stars flashing on white collars. He tips his hat and smiles at me. “You remember what we agreed on, right? You’re good for it?”
“Yeah.”
“I hadda walk right off my shift at Jenny’s place to bail y
our ass out, partner. The lady here thinks we should charge extra.”
I almost forgot. Bouncing drunks at the titty bar.
“Wait,” I tell him. “This place might not be safe. I can’t be sure what I said to those people. I might have told them—”
“You’ll be good for a while. Don’t worry, I made sure the package is secure. Just like you told me to.”
And he showed up just when I said. That was our arrangement. If I don’t call in within twenty-four hours, come and get me.
Smart us.
But . . .
“It can’t be safe here. She was asking me questions about the stuff. About who I’d talked to. I was completely out of my mind. They’ll show up at the club looking for you.”
Marcie closes her book and looks at me hard. “What kind of shit did you just involve us in?”
I roll my eyes at her. “The kind of shit that involves a billion people killing each other in a very public place, lady. Or didn’t you notice we just walked out of a war zone?”
“It wasn’t that bad,” she says. “I’ve seen worse.”
“I’m telling you, something big is going on. Did Franklin tell you he was working for them, too, a few days ago?”
She looks at him hard. “Must’ve slipped his mind.”
Franklin almost shrugs his shoulders, but doesn’t.
All in a day’s work, I guess.
“Do you people have Internet here?”
“Yeah,” Franklin says. “What about our money?”
“It’s taped to my leg. And I have extra, stashed. If you can help out with some more legal advice.”
“Man, we nearly got killed back there,” he says, like he never signed up in the first place, like I never told him how dangerous it was going to be. “Two guys I know real well bought it in that lobby. People who lived here.”
“You didn’t have to bring your friends.”
“It’s a damn good thing I did. Otherwise, we’d all be dead.”
“More money for you, then,” I tell him, remembering what he said before. About being in the Gulf War. “Feel like making some more?”
He pushes back his hat. Scratches his forehead. The woman shrugs.
“What did you have in mind?” Franklin says.
• • •
After I tell him what the plot is, he says he has to run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. I roll up my pants and peel my walking-around money off my leg. On any other day, tearing off all that duct tape might actually hurt.
But today?
Shit.
Franklin hands me a pair of scissors and I open the package. Twenty grand in cash and a photograph from a digital camera, folded in half. The photo Jenison gave me at our third meeting. I look at it a second, then hand it to Franklin, telling him that’s my wife and that I have to find her. He considers my words with a half grunt, his eyes narrowing against the fuzz and the grain of the image. Shakes his head, like he’s telling me he has no idea who those people are. Doesn’t matter. I need these guys for their guns, not their smarts. I hand him fifteen thousand dollars in cash, and top it with another four. I tell him to think of it as a down payment.
He says we’ll have to see. Gotta run it up the flagpole first.
I don’t tell him about Jenison. I don’t tell him about what Jenison told me. That terrible story about the dog crawling in his own blood. It wasn’t just about the dog. She was telling me something else, about all of us.
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